School Diary

Reading

Reading at Wood Farm School

Learning to read is every child's birthright, and it opens the door to future success, as well as to the world of books and reading for pleasure. Helping children to become confident, fluent readers is a core function of our school: all teachers at Wood Farm School see themselves as teachers of reading. During their time with us we want children at Wood Farm to learn how to read – and also to become readers, and to love reading for pleasure.

Our aims are to enable children to:

Read accurately, fluently and with enjoyment

Appreciate a wide variety of fiction, poetry, plays and non-fiction

Be able to use reading skills to find information and to help with their learning

Love reading for pleasure, and be passionate about books

How we teach reading

Phonics

Phonics means the sounds that letters, and groups of letters, make. We teach phonics using a systematic approach called ‘Letters and Sounds’. The very first stage of phonics teaching begins in Foundation Stage, with children learning and joining in with songs, nursery rhymes and word games.

Children also begin short, daily, phonics sessions in reception classes. These continue in Year 1 and Year 2, with children being taught the letters and sounds that they need to ‘de-code’ (or sound-out) written English.

Learning words by sight

From Reception to Year 6 we teach children to recognise some useful, tricky (or just exciting!) words on sight. We call these ‘Knock Out Words’, and children have short, lively Knock Out Word sessions each week throughout the year.

Guided reading

Guided reading means reading with a teacher or adult, where a small group of children are all reading the same text. Children have a guided reading session with an adult each day in school, up to the end of Year 2. From Years 2 – 6 guided reading happens once a week for most children.

Sharing reading

All classes in our school have a ‘class book’ that their teacher is reading to them during the week, or during the day – for younger children this might be a high quality picture book, or shorter story book; for older children this might be a longer chapter book, read over a number of weeks.

Independent reading

Younger children will have a book, selected from the appropriate stage of the Oxford Reading Tree scheme, to read at school and to take home to read. Oxford Reading Tree is a structured reading scheme – meaning it is made up of books written to match different stages of reading ability. Children throughout the school are also able to choose books to read in class and at home from their classroom book collections, and from the school library.

Our Reading Team

The reading team is made up of members of school staff who have particular responsibilities for standards in reading across the school: